The Shotgun Wars- A Hollow Victory

I’d intended to blog about this the day of but, you know, life. Unfortunately, the result is I’m fuzzy on the details. I do remember the punchline though, so I’ll do my best.

The boy had woken up with a case of the runs. Not runs as in his “drawers”, rather runs as in “couldn’t stop running his mouth.” It typically manifests as a nearly endless series of verbal jabs at his sister on everything from the way she prepares her breakfast to her general existence. In extreme circumstances, he’ll get a tad physical with her as well. Usually that happens when she tunes out his verbal diarrhea. When he’s like that, he can’t stand not being acknowledged. Nothing too bad, kid’s stuff like blocking her from the refrigerator or taking “her” spot on the couch or out wrestling her for the remote.

It’s enough to tick me off though.

So after a steady stream of his antics coupled with my pushback, which increased disproportionately to his own efforts, he was in full retreat and had turned into a whiny mess. His sister never made any mistakes. She always gets all the breaks. She’s an evil-genius capable of manipulating probability fields such that he’s the one that gets in trouble.

Do I need to say “blah blah blah”?

So it was that, when it was time to head off to school, his sister was out the door like a shot. I’m guessing the chance to experience a few moments of quiet were part of the motivation. I envied her at the time. The boy was whining more now about how he had to turn off the TV and whatever other frustrations he had.

I followed him out the door and noticed that his feet had barely hit the sidewalk when he broke into a sprint for the car. He flung open the front-passenger door and dramatically dove into the car, slamming the door shut behind him. It all happened so fast I’d barely had time to stop and witness it.

Upon closer examination, I realized that his sister had been hiding in the back seat. He must have noticed that the shotgun position was available, thus the maniacal effort to obtain it.

I got to the car, climbed in and started up the driveway to bring them to school. I then asked the lass what was up. Why was she sitting in the back?

Her reply had to be like a stiletto between the ribs to the boy: “He was whining so much this morning that I let him have the front seat. I didn’t want to listen to him whine about the front seat.”